


Omnivorous

by Letterblade



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Amnesia, Gen, bad parenting decisions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-07 00:11:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5435984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Letterblade/pseuds/Letterblade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>King Ansem does his best for his foundlings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Omnivorous

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a tumblr askfic for my dear friend hellscabanaboy, who asked for "Pls write the red nerd being a shit dad. King of the basement. Bonus if he is trying to dad someone at least as qualified for adulthood as he is." Red nerd, naturally, being Ansem in the catalogue of nerd nicknames we've assembled.

No matter how much his research or his duties consumed him, Ansem the Wise always took an hour in the castle library in the afternoons, as a matter of course. It did help that he had Aeleus to intimidate anyone who might be too demanding upon his time. And to patiently remind him, when he’d lost himself in his windowless laboratory, that the third bell past noon had rung.

He must always be allowed time for calm and reflection, ere he become—what was it his former queen had once said?—unmanageable.

The library was particularly quiet this afternoon, and particularly golden in the sinking light. The royal niece was out in the gardens on so fine a day, not pattering about the library demanding stories from her nursemaid. Ienzo was here, as he so often was, but fast asleep, curled up in an armchair with his sockfeet on the table and his small arms wrapped around a tome nearly as large as himself. Ansem paused to arrange him slightly more comfortably, brush his hair fondly out of his face.

A faint, frustrated grunt echoed from behind a bookcase.

It was his newest foundling, he discovered, rounding a corner. Xehanort, with four or five books sprawled over a reading table, but standing, with his back to them. Using one of the gilded pillars as an impromptu mirror as he fumbled with a silky lavender scarf around his neck.

“Xehanort?”

The young man turned, startled, a frown dark across his brow. He’d managed nothing close to a proper cravat—and perhaps some might say the color did not suit him, but Ansem had little care for such distinctions. “King Ansem. Ah. You surprised me.”

“My apologies.”

For a moment they stood in awkward silence as Xehanort dragged fussily at the cravat with one finger.

“May I show you, if you wish?” Ansem offered, a touch hesitant. Xehanort was—in a painful situation, he could only imagine. A grown man, clearly of power and accomplishment, reduced to a fumbling babe for lack of knowledge of himself or the world. He’d rankled at condescension, and Ansem could hardly blame him.

“I…yes.” Xehanort let out a breath of frustration. “My thanks. Books are useful for many sorts of knowledge, I’ve discovered, but not what is hands-on.”

“Quite true.” Ansem stepped forth, reached up to Xehanort’s throat to loosen the tangled knot—the young man barely stiffened, a gratifying sign—and dropped his own red scarf aside to demonstrate. Xehanort watched him tie his own cravat with greedy attention, then took the scarf back when he was done to do a much more passable attempt. “Yes, that’s the basic knot—smooth it there as you pass it through and it will lie better—”

The two of them fussed, tugged at details. Xehanort’s head canted back, and even his neck was that of a warrior, strong lines of muscle standing out as he fidgeted with his collar. Ansem had to shove some of his thick white hair out of the way. Finally perfect. Xehanort, intent, undid it all and retied it to make sure he knew how, and turned to the pillar to spread out the ruffle. The fine silk snagged under his thumb, and Xehanort looked down at his hands with a frown. He had thick calluses on his right, Ansem noticed, some across his palm on the left. Ansem caught his hand to examine them.

“I wonder, Xehanort—perhaps you were a swordsman?”

“Perhaps,” Xehanort said slowly. Closed his other hand, large and firm, over Ansem’s, without even seeming to notice that he had, and Ansem chooses not to comment.

“I could have one of the royal guard forth to teach you. Perhaps that might jog your memory. Dilan and Aeleus make no use of the long blade, nor Braig, but Squall is quite skilled with it.”

Xehanort considered that for a moment. “In time. But…this draws me more, in truth.”

Ansem cast a quick eye over the table. _Madame Quistis’ Guide to Formal Fashion For All_. Two different histories of Radiant Garden, from two very different historians—not a man to accept one perspective as rote, he appreciated that. A tome of anatomy, so technical as to challenge any journeyman. _Town Maintenance Systems: Blessing Or Curse?_ Oh, how he’d rankled at that one, when it was published, but he had no place curtailing his citizens so. “You seem quite omnivorous in your pursuit of knowledge.”

Xehanort nodded, and a light of excitement shone in his face, like none he'd yet seen. “Yes. I. I want to know _everything_ , Your Majesty. Everything there possibly is to know.”

Ansem felt himself smile, warm and proud, and more than a little excited. If this was how his mind had re-developed in merely four days, what heights would he reach after even a year of education? Whatever poor fate had befallen Xehanort in the past, perhaps this was how the currents of the world had balanced it out. Surely there could be no better place for him than this. Not when Ansem himself was so close to the mysteries of the world itself, and had so much to learn this very week from the strange armor and sword that had appeared with Xehanort in the town square.

“So do I, my friend. So do I.”


End file.
